One Destiny 2 clan works together to calculate the updated drop rate of exotic items from Legend and Master difficulty Lost Sectors, only to discover that the change may not be quite as significant as first thought. Exotic items in Destiny 2 are some of the most sought after gear in the game, as not only do they have a unique appearance, but they also come with some interesting effects, abilities, and perks, which can help make challenging content or enemies much easier.
While these items have notoriously low drop rates while playing, Bungie gave players a way to farm for the gear with the arrival of the Beyond Light expansion. Each day, Destiny 2 players can take part in a rotating Lost Sector activity, playing through Legend or Master level difficulty to potentially earn exotic armor at the end of it. Unfortunately, the drop rate on these difficult activities was quite low, a fact that Bungie corrected last month in a new patch by buffing the drop rate. While the news excited the community, Bungie never revealed how high the drop rate was buffed, leaving the community to figure that out on their own.
In a new post on the Destiny 2 subReddit, a user named RipTheDream916 provided a disappointing update to the drop rate buff. Their clan recently pooled data together in a spreadsheet, running nearly 240 Lost Sectors on Legend difficulty to try and calculate Bungie's new drop percentage. Shockingly, the numbers point to a 2% overall increase from 25% to 27%, with RipTheDream916 also running his own personal test and coming to 28.5% after 56 runs. Master runs also increased slightly, going from 33% to 37% based on their data, with the average stat roll totals coming in around 63 and an average drop of 2.77 enhancement cores.
While these numbers are fairly convincing and thorough, it's still technically unofficial even if the news left most Destiny 2 players in the comments unsurprised and disappointed. Many agree that Bungie likely didn't want to make things too easy and instead keeping the "carrot on a stick" approach intact. Others continue to feel like the effort involved isn't worth the grind or rewards given, with many spending multiple hours without getting the exact drop they wanted. Not only that, runs are rendered meaningless when an exotic finally drops, but the stat roll is considered bad.
While the exotic drop rate appears to be continually stuck between a rock and a hard place, fans do have other ways of nabbing new exotic weapons, as typically each season sees the launch of a new missing. For Season of Defiance, players have the opportunity to head into the Vex Network to obtain the Vexcalibur exotic glaive. Similar to Revision Zero, players can unlock new intrinsic upgrades from hidden chests, helping to change the way the weapon behaves.
Destiny 2 is available now on Epic Games Store, PS4, PS5, Steam, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
